During a briefing “MinRegion’s Refoms. What next?!”, Hennadii Zubko, Vice Prime Minister – Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine, presented a Transition Book (Reform Road Map), developed in course of 5 years by MinRegion’s team for their successors.

“The Transition Book is a kind of instruction for the next Government on policies that fall within the competence of MinRegion. These are decentralisation, regional development, energy efficiency, housing and communal services, deregulation in construction. It shows the results we have been able to achieve since 2014, as well as the roadmap for key reforms that we propose to the next Government for implementation. It is a kind of recipe for the continued success of the reforms,” Hennadii Zubko emphasised.

The government official focused on the results of each reform and outlined further goals.

Decentralisation. To date, 936 hromadas have already been formed in Ukraine with new powers and resources, with direct budgetary relations with the state budget. 1356 AHs are in perspective plans, another 64 hromadas are awaiting the CEC's decision to hold elections this autumn. Since 2014, local budgets have increased from UAH 70 billion to UAH 291 billion, a forecast for 2019. As for state support, it has grown from UAH 500 million to UAH 33 billion in 2019 over 5 years. 12,000 infrastructure projects have already been implemented.

To further implement the reform, Hennadii Zubko mentioned in particular: the adoption of 17 priority laws (on the principles of administrative and territorial structure, “On Service in Local Self-Government Bodies”, “On Local State Administrations” and others), adoption of amendments to the Constitution, completion of hromadas’ amalgamation and holding of local elections in 2020 on a new territorial basis, introduction of a new administrative structure and supervision pver the legality of LSG’s decisions, and a prefect institute introduction.

Regarding regional development, full-fledged implementation of regional human development and regional competitiveness indices (transition to measurement of regional development by these indices), introduction of smart specialisation of regions, development of mountainous areas and cross-border cooperation are significant.